Episode 21: Water

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golly
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Episode 21: Water

Post by golly »



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589MB

Duration:
1 hour 37 minutes 55 seconds

Cohosts:
Nancy, Kay, William and Maxeem (and Lisa)

Synopsis:
We get to hear about Nancy's work with water preservation efforts among other great topics, and Kay returns to share in the story time.


Show Notes:
Director Sheldon Wolfchild's documentaries: https://www.38plus2productions.com/
Uranium mining on Oglala Lakota land: http://www.mining-law-reform.info/LakotaSurvival.pdf
Poison Wind Movie: (2007)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFtCmG9pcQ
Urgency (2007) of mining law reform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY-355t_f6Q
EPA Report on cleaning abandoned uranium mines (2014): https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-urani ... nium-mines
In 2014 a second Five-Year Plan was created which built upon the work done during the first five years, and established objectives and strategies to address the most significant risks to human health and the environment.
"This town of 170,000 replaced some cops with medics and mental health workers. It's worked for over 30 years" (MSM source: CNN/MSN)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this- ... ElPQ1ro1p4
Around 30 years ago, a town in Oregon retrofitted an old van, staffed it with young medics and mental health counselors and sent them out to respond to the kinds of 911 calls that wouldn't necessarily require police intervention.
Nancy's publications about Swami Chinmayananda: https://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Freeman/e/ ... scns_share
Werner Erhard: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_ ... e_Forum%22

golly
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IN MY VIEW: It took a community for success

Post by golly »

Nancy Freeman has long been a fixture on the local scene when it comes to water issues. She has shared her insights and expertise many times in these pages. She has decided to move to the middle of the Arkansas Ozarks. We invited her to share some words as she prepared to leave. As is her history, she doesn’t hold back.

I’m taking off to new territory — with green trees, good garden soil, regular rain and woods to take a walk in the morning. In bidding goodbye to Green Valley after 20 years, I have lots of good memories and also memories of the challenges with trying and succeeding to get clean water from the local mining company’s pollution. But I did not do it alone, it took a community.

I remember the first ADEQ hearing here in July 2005, at the GVR Desert Hills Auditorium. I had complained when ADEQ changed the date from March to July when all the concerned snowbirds would be gone. The ADEQ liaison told me, “We don’t schedule our hearings according to your vacations.” So you can imagine my surprise when I showed up for the hearing and there were at least 100 cars in the parking lot!

My loyal helper Dick Shuman gave a star presentation. Dick Roberts of the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council (now the Green Valley Council) also gave a good presentation (GVC knew about the problem but said “There’s nothing we can do.” Yet they did not want me on their environmental committee unless I had every word I said or wrote approved by them previously.) A representative of U.S. Fish and Game even showed up to testify about the mining pollution of the forests, affecting wildlife and plants for foraging. The biggest surprise was Sally Pablo, the water official from Tohono O’odham Nation, who showed up and gave a comprehensive report. Since reservations are on “U.S. government” land, ADEQ had no jurisdiction over their land even though the Nation had the same mining pollution there. In the end, they had fought long court battles to legally get help from ADEQ. ADEQ was giving them about the same amount of help as us at the Sierrita mine .

The whole success only happened because of Kathy Engel, the editor of the Green Valley News. She printed every word I wrote of my research in the Opinion column. (A couple of times piece was so long that she had to divide it for two editions.) Often, she gave me suggestions of who to contact. She sent out the great journalist, Tim Hull, to all our weekly info meetings at the library, which even broke the rules and let us have four meetings a month instead of the two per month limit.

Yes, I did get help from UA water scientists. Jim Field and Reyes Sierra give me advice about the chemical reality. One even informed me of the use of plants to remove toxins from the ground… they would just suck toxins up thorough their roots, but the plants had to be handled as toxic waste.

Wally Wilson of Tucson Water (now Metro) called me and left a message: “Nancy, you are taking on the water pollution. You and your group need to go over to the Arizona Water Department and look at the depletion of water in the area due to the mines and the pecan groves.”

I conferred with Eric Holler of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation several times. It takes a community to make a change and all of us made it happened. We have had a few other wins in Arizona: Florence and Payson — —t not Oak Flat National Forest Campground. Congresspersons Gosar and Kirkpatrick and Sen. McCain saw to that.

The local mine

The Green Valley scenario would not be complete without a shout-out to John Brack, the operations manager at Sierrita in 2004-07. He knew mining, he grew up on the Navajo Nation in the 1970s where uranium was being mined. He dealt with the Green Valley citizen outrage with grace and ease. He was the person who signed the official consent order that committed Sierrita to get their mining slurry out of Green Valley water. I feel like they knew what was going on, but since no one complained. He has been followed by two excellent operation managers.

Then came along Rosemont Canadian operation, brought here by Jamie Sturgess. He had been the environmental person at Sierrita for Cyprus mining company, which had a poor environmental record in the United State. However, he knew about the mining claims over in the Santa Ritas, so he found a Canadian company that had never mined a single operation to buy up the claims. The rest is history, which I have documented through the years and hearings on www.savethesantacruzaquifer.info.

Water law

So what’s going on now?? I have spent the last two years working on a very egregious water law on the Arizona law books. In 1983, Statute 541, written by Phelps Dodge official Tom Chandler, was approved by the state Legislature. The law states simply that a mining company can pump all the water they “need” from anywhere they want. Today, there are two Active Management Areas that are being threatened by high water pumping by foreign mining companies in our water management areas (AMA). In both Tucson and Maricopa AMAs, even though these mines are outside the AMA and ADWR is spending time and money creating “management plans.” These mines pollute and destroy our national forests that are actually protected by the U.S. Winters doctrine. I have contacted the local legislators to do something about writing a new law to undo this travesty. (They don’t have to do anything — there’s a room full of attorneys at the state capitol who write bills.) They have done nothing, not even answer my emails for two years on the issue.

And that’s not all! Community water users have CAP (www.cap.az.com) allocations because the original developer knew that there were two high water users —mining and pecan groves —in the region.

Thirty years later, we still have not had delivery of that water although we have been paid $2,290,000 to date for the right to that water. In the meantime, Phoenix CAP officials has been selling the “excess water” to developers, etc. up there —at what price is unknown. But it is known that Community Water customers have not been paid a dime of their profits.

What’s the hang up? The Arizona Corporation Commission. They allow this travesty because they have a rule that a public water company cannot get a loan to construct an infrastructure. They have to put up the money for the project up front… although they allow us to pay over $2 million for absolutely nothing. Yes, they know; I have informed them. But with their $150,000 annual salary (2016), they have better things to do.

So, it has not been an easy ride, but at least we have clean water and a mining company that is putting in $1 million a year for worthy projects in the community. So I’m retiring, or I guess you could say I’m going to live like a government worker and do nothing.

Nancy Freeman is a retired data coordinator for NASA, Vibration and Acouston Lab, Houston; and a data-report coordinator for Standford Research Institute: Radio Physics Lab, Menlo Park, Calif.
https://www.gvnews.com/opinion/letters_ ... 3907b.html

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